


It wasn't a happy feeling...

by IrisPurpurea



Series: All the Little Lights (Marauders Fics) [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Animagus, Azkaban, Dementors, Gen, Memories Coming Back, Sirius escapes from Azkaban, happiness can be found
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-28 22:02:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18765130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrisPurpurea/pseuds/IrisPurpurea
Summary: "It was as if someone had lit a fire in my head, and the Dementors couldn't destroy it..."





	It wasn't a happy feeling...

_July 31, 1993_

Maybe the other inmates had caught a glimpse of the bone-thin black dog darting past their cells. Sirius didn’t care. Somewhere in what remained of his mind, he registered that they were probably insane enough not to notice.

_I’m innocent. I’m innocent. He’s at Hogwarts._

He could sense that he’d confused the Dementors, but that was fading fast. They were homing in on his presence, reaching through the air and grasping for his mind as he ran from them. Their cold aura swarmed him, sharpened around him as air rushed past his ears. An icy hand grabbed his heart and squeezed, his breath came in sharp gasps that pierced his sides, but they could not grasp his soul tight enough to coax it away from his body. When he was in his Animagus form, they could barely sense he even had one.

He stopped short, tripping over his paws, as a cavernous blackness suddenly loomed before him. A few feet away, the stones of the floor vanished into it. He sensed the Dementors drawing back, as though they were watching him, waiting. He shook his head, trying to clear them away, but they were unrelenting, feeling around for his mind from a distance. He shook his head again, concentrated all his efforts on wrenching his thoughts away from them, and with a split-second shock of clarity he realized he was staring into a night sky from which the Dementors had sucked the stars. Either the wall had been blown away long ago or the Ministry had never seen a need for one in the first place.

The next moment, the air behind him shifted, and a sense of overwhelming despair engulfed him, swirling in his mind and roaring in his ears. He staggered toward the edge, limping, dragging his body, and peered into the starless void; he could just disappear into it, into the darkness, he’d fall and fall until he ended up with Lily and James… Lily and James, who were killed-

 _NO_. His foot slipped and hung in the air, it took every ounce of his flickering will to scrabble backward.  _HE’S AT HOGWARTS. I’M INNOCENT_. The thought was his lifeline, he used it to pull himself backward, to steady himself against the ferocious wind now rushing at his back. The Dementors were enraged again and had fixed on his presence. Their cold fury broke across his back in waves.  _I’M INNOCENT. I’M INNOCENT_. They couldn’t paralyze him for long. His eyes darted to the left and found an opening in the wall, a staircase. There were stone steps receding into the darkness.

 _IT WAS PETER._ He flung himself sideways, into the opening as the Dementors closed in around him.  _I’M INNOCENT_. His paws couldn’t navigate the steps, and instead, he slid down on his stomach and landed in a heap at the bottom, where two more dementors awaited him. Their rotten, glistening fingers reached out to grab him, but they couldn’t sense where he was. All they knew was that a vague, subhuman sentience stood before them. One hand flew past his nose, another barely missed his twitching ear. Then his eyes locked onto a sliver of deep purple sky in the distance, framed by the tendrils of the dementors’ robes. The cold around him tightened, grew sharper still, as more dementors flooded down the stairs behind him. He had no other choice.

 _I’M INNOCENT._ He plunged forward, darting between the dementors as they reached blindly for him. The air around him became thick, syrupy, as though he’d plunged into a river mid-thaw. His lungs seemed to vanish, he couldn’t draw breath. They had him trapped, they were closing in, searing tendrils of their cloaks lashed around his ankles. But still, they couldn’t grasp his soul.

 _I’m innocent. I’m innocent._  His vision became grainy, darkening around the edges.  _Peter killed James and Lily. He’s at Hogwarts. And I need to get to him. Let. Me. GO!_

It was enough. The dementors’ grip loosened for a fraction of a second, and with one last almighty wrench, he flung himself free. Their cloaks slipped from his ankles, he wrested a gasping breath from their clutches. The fire that burned steadily in his mind, the hunger for revenge, was something they could neither take from him nor use against him. He could feel the pull of the dementors recede as he skidded towards what he could now recognize as a doorway he hadn’t seen in twelve years.

Then the ragged black dog shot out from the doorway and into the moonlight, slid down the rocky shore slick with spray, and plunged into the black waves of the sea.

The water was freezing, the wind stirred the sea and beat his back, and he shivered violently as he clung to a boulder. But this was not, he realized with a surge of gratitude, the paralyzing chill of the dementors that left him limp and listless. He could feel himself shaking, his teeth were chattering, his ears standing alert. There was no longer a dead weight compressing his chest, and though every breath still came in gasps, each filled his lungs with clean, fresh air. He hung there, braced against that wonderfully wet boulder, feeling his chest rise and fall as it filled with air, feeling his pounding heart, pumping strength into his every limb.

But the effects of the Dementors still lingered on that rock, and as his senses adjusted to their newfound freedom, he could feel the creeping malaise under his skin, the dull throbbing of despair in his ears. They wouldn’t leave the walls of the fortress without explicit orders, but they’d realize which of their prey had escaped soon enough when they drifted by his cell in their search and no longer sensed a presence there. And if they caught him then, he’d be worse than dead. Scanning the horizon, he detected the faint, glowing outline of coastline in the distance. Azkaban had one entrance, he recalled, and could be approached from only one point. He needed to move, and soon.

A grating, guttural screech suddenly rent the night sky. The Dementors had realized his absence. The thrill of horror their cries sent through him was enough to propel him forward, and he kicked off the rock with his back legs as another cry pierced the air.

He paddled frantically, soon losing sight of that distant point as the waves threatened to overwhelm him. One crashed over his head, filling his mouth and nose with water-

_Go on, Sirius. You first._

_What’s that, James? Are you scared?_

_Are_ you _scared?_

_You wish._

_SPLASH._

He burst to the surface, startled, just as another wave loomed over him. As it crashed over his head, the image suddenly bloomed in his mind.

No, it wasn’t just an image. The realization swelled in him and he burst from the water again, gasping. It was a memory. The dementors’ twelve-year hold on his soul was slipping, and he remembered.

He was standing at the edge of a great black lake – no,  _the_  Black Lake – with two other boys beside him… James! And Remus! Their faces swam into his mind and he kicked hard, propelling himself forward through the waves as though they were waiting for him on the shore. He remembered, he remembered and strength coursed through his veins.

They’d snuck out that night under James’ new cloak, in February of their first year. Peter had refused to wake from a stubborn slumber. Now the three of them stood, each daring the other to jump in first. One moment, Remus was at their side, and the next he’d disappeared into the water. Startled, Sirius had gripped James’ hand, and now he felt James’ hand in his, pulling him towards the shore…

They’d peered, stricken, into the depths of the lake. Remus had seemingly vanished. Then suddenly, his face had popped out of the water, wearing a devilish grin, and before Sirius knew it, he had been pulled along with James into the lake with an almighty-

 _CRASH_. Another wave broke against him and the image dissolved in his mind, but immediately twenty other moments blossomed in its place like fireworks. He and James fleeing the muggle police on his motorbike while laughing uproariously. He and Remus clutching each other for support, doubled over with silent giggles as James and Lily’s Patronuses circled each other in the Great Hall. Lily’s delighted face when Sirius snuck her into the hospital wing to see James with antlers sprouting from his head. He remembered the reluctant amusement that flickered under the surface of McGonagall’s sternest look. He remembered being wrapped in Mrs. Potter’s embrace as Mr. Potter set a mug of tea on the kitchen table before him, into which he’d slipped a shot of firewhiskey without his wife’s knowledge. He remembered the weight and warmth of his baby godson in his arms! He remembered, he remembered, and the memories shielded him from the fearsome waves, warmed him though the water was cold, pushed him onward though his legs were numb.

And at last, as his paws began to scrape silt, they struck against pebbles and dug through the rising sand until he could finally stand on all fours again. He couldn’t resist letting out a joyous bark. He splashed onto the sandy shore, dimly registered that although the dementors had sounded the alarm, the Ministry had not yet come to answer their cries. They were no more than distant vultures to him now. They would not leave their posts unless ordered.

With the last drops of strength left in his limbs, he hauled himself into a scraggly patch of bushes, concealed in the shadow of a rather large boulder. This, he thought, would do quite nicely. He closed his eyes, and Sirius Black grew out of the form of the black dog, still looking every bit as gaunt and ragged, and began to laugh. He lay in the shadowed sand as decades of happy moments flooded his heart and guffawed as he hadn’t in over a decade, gasping for breath, tears streaming from his eyes, sides clenched and aching. At last with copious wheezing and dry coughs that wracked his body, he stumbled to a stop and lay staring at the stars, sinking deeper into satisfied exhaustion. Just before his eyes closed Sirius stirred up enough energy to transform once again.

The weathered black dog lay quite still and peaceful in the sand, ears and tail twitching as the deepest happiness filled his dreams. Sirius was dancing at James’ wedding, waltzing, with Remus and his mischievous smile as lights danced in his golden-brown hair, with James and his glaring grin as tears sparkled in his eyes, with beautiful Lily as she threw back her head and laughed. He laughed with Alice and Frank as they watched James zooming through the air on a broomstick. He knelt in the gray light of the Shrieking Shack and pushed Remus’s curls away from his eyes with one hand, taking his hand gingerly in the other. He pelted across the snowy courtyard and barreled into a bewildered James, wrapping him in a ferocious hug. He felt his heart skip a beat when Lily announced she was pregnant; he bounded toward her and kissed her forehead as she grinned. He felt cocooned in the arms of James’ parents, their warmth soothing his sobs. He saw the glint of steely pride in Minerva’s eyes as she surveyed him in the Great Hall on his last day at Hogwarts. He remembered, he remembered them, and their faces filled him with a steady fire.

Sirius awoke as though surfacing from the depths of a warm ocean. He lay floating there for a while as graying dawn crept over the sky. Then a  _crunch_  near his head brought him abruptly back to firm ground. Footsteps, agitated whispers, filled the air around him. As they swung past him and faded into the distance, he stood and crept from the bushes. The sun was just rising to light that unholy sea on fire, and North was directly ahead of him. He took a few tentative steps, then broke into an earnest trot.

_I’m innocent. He’s at Hogwarts. He’s at Hogwarts._


End file.
